in spuds. It didn’t have no door, but it did have some louvers for ventilation, looked like. Tell you the truth, I didn’t notice the thing much, ‘cept to see it was there. Then one night, she rips off the platin’, and there, in its skids, was this little steam launch!
“It was all rigged out with the same vine layout that the Betsy B had runnin’ all over ‘er, and had a name on it — the Susan B. It was a dead ringer for the big one, if you think back and remember what she looked like when she come outa the navy yard. Well, when the little un was about three weeks old — and close to twenty feet long, I judge — the Betsy B shoved off one mornin’, in broad daylight, without so much as by-your-leave, and goes around on the outside of my island. She’d tore up so much line gettin’ away for ‘er night jamborees, I’d quit moorin’ ‘er. I knew she’d come back, ‘count o’ my oil tank. She’d hang onto the dock by her own vines.
“I run up to the house and put a glass on ‘er. She was steamin’ along slow, back and forth. Then she reached down with a sorta crane she’d growed and picked that Susan B up, like you’d lift a kitten by the scruff o’ the neck, and sets it in the water. Even where I was, I could hear the Susan B pipin’, shrill-like. Made me think of a peanut-wagon whistle. I could see the steam jumpin’ out of ‘er little whistle. I s’pose it was scary for ‘er, gettin’ ‘er bottom wet, the first time. But the Betsy B kept goin’ along, towin’ the little one by one of ‘er vines.
“She’d do something like that two or three times a week, and if I wasn’t too busy, I’d watch ‘em, the Betsy B steamin’ along, and the little un cavortin’ around ‘er, cuttin’ across ‘er bows or a-chasin’ ‘er. One day, the Susan B was chargin’ around my little cove, by itself, the Betsy B quiet at the dock. I think she was watchin’ with another gourd thing she’d sprouted in the crow’s nest. Anyhow, the Susan B hit that sandbar pretty hard, and stuck there, whistlin’ like all get out. The Betsy B cast off and went over there. And, boy, did she whang that little un on the koko!
“I’m gettin’ near to the end — now, and it all come about ‘count of this Susan B. She was awful wild, and no use that I could see as a lifeboat, ‘cause she’d roll like hell the minute any human’d try to get in ‘er — it’d throw ‘em right out into the water! I was gettin’ more fed up every day, what with havin’ to buy more oil all the time, and not gettin’ much use outa my boats.
“One day, I was takin’ out a picnic party in my other motorboat, and I put in to my cove to pick up some bait. Just as I was goin’ in, that durned Susan B began friskin’ around in the cove, and comes chargin’ over and collides with me, hard. It threw my passengers all down, and the women got their dresses wet and all dirty. I was good and mad. I grabbed the Susan B with a boat hook and hauled her alongside, then went to work on her binnacle with a steerin’ oar. You never heard such a commotion. I said a while ago she sounded like a peanut whistle — well, this time it was more like a calliope. And to make it worse, the Betsy B, over at the dock sounds off with her whistle — a big chimed one, them days. And when I see ‘er shove off and start over to us, I knew friendship had ceased!
“That night she ups and leaves me. I was a-sleepin’ when the phone rings, ‘bout two A.M. It was the night watchman over’t the oil company’s dock. Said my Betsy B was alongside and had hoses into their tanks, but nobody was on board, and how much should he give ‘er. I yelled at him to give ‘er nuthin’ — told him to take an ax and cut ‘er durned hoses. I jumped outa my bunk and tore down to the dock. Soon as I could get the danged motor started I was on my way over there. But it didn’t do no good. Halfway between here and there, I meets ‘er, comin’ out, makin’ knots. She had ‘er runnin’ lights on, legal and proper, and sweeps right by me — haughty as you please — headin’ straight out, Yarmouth way. If she saw me, she didn’t give no sign.
“Next day I got a bill for eight hundred tons of oil — she musta filled up every one of ‘er compartments — and it mighty near broke me to pay it. I was so relieved to find ‘er gone, I didn’t even report it. That little launch was what did it — I figured if they was one, they was bound to be more. I never did know where she got the idea; nothin’ that floats around here’s big enough to carry lifeboats.”
“Did Dr. Dilbiss ever look at her,” I asked, “after she started to grow?”
“That Doc was so hoppin’ mad over the Simpkins brat spillin’ his ‘Oil of Life’ as he called it, that he packed up and went away right after. Some o’ the summer people do say he went to Europe — made a crack about some dictator where he was, and got put in jail over there. I don’t know about that, but he’s never been back.”
“And you’ve never seen or heard of the Betsy B since?” I queried, purposely making it a leading question.
“Seen ‘er, no, but heard of ‘er plenty. First time was about three months after she left. That was when the Norwegian freighter claimed he passed a big ship and a smaller one with a whale between ‘em. Said the whale was half cut up, and held by a lot of cables. They come up close, but the ships didn’t answer hails, or put up their numbers. I think that was my Betsy B, and the Susan B, growed up halfway. That Betsy B could make anything she wanted outa sea water, ‘cept oil. But she was smart enough, I bet, to make whale oil, if she was hungry enough.
“The next thing I heard was the time the Ruritania met ‘er. No question about that — they read ‘er name. The Ruritania was a- goin’ along, in the mid-watch it was, and the helmsman kept sayin’ it was takin’ a lot of starboard helm to hold ‘er up. ‘Bout that time, somebody down on deck calls up there’s a ship alongside, hangin’ to the starboard quarter. They kept hollerin’ down to the ship, wantin’ to know what ship, and all that, and gettin’ no answer. You oughta read about that. Then she shoved off in the dark and ran away. The Ruritania threw a spot on ‘er stern and wrote down the name.
“That mightn’t prove it — anybody can paint a name — but after she’d gone, they checked up and found four holes in the side, and more’n a thousand tons of bunker oil gone. That Betsy B had doped out these other ships must have oil, and bein’ a ship herself, she knew right where they stored it. She just snuck up alongside in the middle of the night, and worked ‘er vines in to where the oil was.
“Things like that kept happenin’, and the papers began talkin’ about the Wild Ships. They sighted dozens of ‘em, later, all named ‘Something W — Lucy B, Anna B, Trixie B, oh, any number — which in itself is another mystery. Where would a poor dumb steam launch learn all them names?”
“You said she was ex-navy,” I reminded him.
“That may be it,” he admitted. “Well, that’s what started the newspapers to callin’ them the B-Boats. ‘Course, I can’t deny that when they ganged up in the Gulf Stream and started in robbin’ tankers of their whole cargo, and in broad daylight, too, it was goin’ too far. They was all too fast to catch. Commodore What’s-his-name just had to sink ‘er, I reckon. The papers was ridin’ him hard. But I can tell you that there wasn’t any real meanness in my Betsy B — spoiled maybe — but not mean. That stuff they printed ‘bout the octopuses on the bridges, with long danglin’ tentacles wasn’t nothin’ but that gourd brain and vines growed up.”
He sighed a deep, reminiscent sigh, and made a gesture indicating he had told all there was to tell.
“You are confident, then,” I asked, “that the so-called B-Boats were the children of your Betsy B?”
“Must be,” he answered, looking down ruefully at his patched overalls and shabby
